In August 2002, M. Night Shyamalan received the most unexpected death knell of his career: Newsweek declared him “The Next Spielberg.” It’s a label that’s been haunting the Sixth Sense director ever since. Worse than simply being known as the “twists guy,” Newsweek’s hollow comparison built an expectation that Shyamalan could deliver the same four-quadrant blockbuster thrills as Steven Spielberg. Instead, the director of Sixth Sense and Signs went on to embrace a kind of hokey, B-movie sensibility you’ll almost never find in a Spielberg picture. Shyamalan’s latest film, Trap, is the purest embodiment of that difference.
